An opinion article on Hyperallergic analyzes official portraits of Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers released in May 2025, in which the soldiers are depicted with their backs to the camera. The author argues that this pose is a deliberate tactic to avoid identification and potential prosecution for war crimes in the occupied Palestinian territories, weaponizing surveillance technologies against the very people they surveil. The piece frames these images as "counter-portraits" that transform individual soldiers into a faceless, intimidating mass, contrasting them with traditional portraiture that invites intimate moral scrutiny.
This matters because it connects a specific visual practice in military propaganda to broader debates about surveillance, privacy, and accountability. The article argues that hiding one's face in official portraits is an admission of guilt, and extends this logic to other contexts like ICE detention facilities and masked police. By critiquing how power conceals itself while exposing the vulnerable, the piece raises urgent questions about digital rights, the ethics of looking, and the role of portraiture in an age of biometric surveillance.